Mission: Apophis 2036

About the game

It is 2036, and the asteroid Apophis is on a collision course with Earth. A space agency sends you up with one small shuttle and the last chance to stop it. That is the whole story, told in green letters on a black screen before the game begins, and then you are out among the rocks.

The rules follow the classic arcade rock shooters. Your shuttle sits in a field of drifting asteroids. You turn it left and right, fire the engine to push it forward and drift, and shoot. A big rock breaks into two medium ones, a medium one into two small ones, and a small one turns to dust. Clear the field and the next level starts with more and faster rocks. Touch one and you lose a shuttle.

Once in a while a big rock breaks into a rare gold one, worth ten times the points of a normal rock, and it splits into three gold pieces. Every hit in a row raises a combo multiplier, shown on the screen as x2, x3 and so on, and one miss resets it, so careful shooting pays more than spraying. Every 5000 points brings an extra shuttle, up to five.

At the end of a run you get a medal for how far you got (bronze at level 3, silver at 6, gold from level 9 on), and a good score goes into a high score table under the name you type. There are three missions to pick from, Easy, Medium and Hard. It all looks like an old computer: a tiny 320 by 200 screen, white pixel rocks, a white and red shuttle and green text.

Playing it here

Click Play and wait for the page to load (about 12 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). After the story screen, click or press Enter to reach the menu, choose New Mission and then a difficulty. High scores and medals are kept in your browser.

Controls

A gamepad works too: the d-pad or stick steers, and the face buttons shoot and thrust.

Tips

Do not thrust too much. The shuttle keeps drifting after you let go. Short pushes are easier to control than long ones.

Shoot the small rocks last. Breaking every big rock first fills the screen with fast small ones. Finishing a rock off before moving to the next keeps the field calm.

Miss less, score more. The combo multiplier is where the points are. A missed shot costs you the multiplier.

Level 9 is gold. The medal depends on the level you reach, not the score.

FAQ

Are my scores saved? Yes, the high score table and your medals stay in your browser.

Does it work on a phone? No. It needs a keyboard or a gamepad.

Is it really free to share? Yes. The game, its art and its music are under the MIT License.

Credits and licence

Mission: Apophis 2036 was made by Tobiasz Stamborski in 2023, the author's first project in Godot, with the author's own pixel art, font and music. MIT License. It runs on Godot Engine 4.5.1 (MIT).

For this site the Exit options were removed from the menus, a pause fix was made so Esc does not close the pause menu at once, and two images were redrawn: the emblem of the fictional space agency (it followed the design of a real agency's emblem) and the opening screen (it showed a real games console). The new images are CC0. The licence texts, the notices of the libraries inside the Godot engine and the source of this build are linked from this page.